The latest Boeing and aerospace news, including updates about the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, 747-8 and 737, Airbus A380 and A350, the anticipated Boeing 797 and Boeing jobs and layoffs

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Boeing looks past first 787s and 747-8s

The first Boeing 787 for Ethiopian Airlines is seen in production in front of the 13th 787 for All Nippon Airways on Thursday, June 2, 2011 in Boeing's wide-body plant in Everett, Wash. (Aubrey Cohen/seattlepi.com) | Click picture for photo gallery.

With Boeing set to finally delivering the first 787 Dreamliner and 747-8 Freighter this summer, the company is putting increasing focus on what comes next.

Boeing’s decision, expected later this year, on whether to outfit the 737 with new engines or launch a replacement aircraft program has gotten most of the attention recently, including this story on Wednesday. Boeing’s next airplane, however, will be the 787-9, a stretched version of the initial 787-8 model, and then an even-bigger 787-10.

“The 787 is our top development priority for the future,” Nicole Piasecki, vice president of Business Development and Strategic Integration for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, told reporters earlier this month.
Development is on track for the 787-9, which is scheduled for first delivery in late 2013, according to Scott Fancher, Boeing vice president and general manager of the 787 program.

“We’re not seeing the same sorts of leading indicators of disruption to the design or uncertainty with the design that we saw during 787-8 development,” he said. “All of the indicators to date are that we have a very stable development process underway for the 787-9.”

In recent months, executives have talked with increasing certainty about the 787-10. It will be about 15 percent larger than the 787-9, seating about 320 passengers, with a range of about 6,800 nautical miles, compared with 7,650 to 8,200 nautical miles for the 787-9, and offer both engines available on the other 787s – the Rolls-Royce Trent 100 and GEnx, Piasecki said.

“The seat-mile economics on this airplane are phenomenal,” she said. “They are 11 percent better than our estimate of the (Airbus) A350-900 and they are over 5 percent better than what the A350-1000 is today.”

The market wants the 787-10, Piasecki said. “If the airplane were offered today, I would be able to announce orders today.”

Boeing will produce the aircraft as soon as possible without disrupting the rest of the 787 program, but has not yet set a date for entry into service, she said.

Boeing also has to decide what it’s going to do about the 777, which will face competition from the A350-1000 in the market for the largest twin-engine aircraft.

The 777 “is sitting in the marketplace today alone,” Piasecki said. Nonetheless, she said, Boeing is looking at wing and engine improvements around 2015.

“Once Airbus defines the A350-1000, we are prepared to make a much more significant investment in the 777, because we believe we will have to,” she added. “The timeframe for that in our minds is in the early part of the next decade.”

First, Boeing has to deliver the first 787-8 and ramp production up to the 10 a month planned by the end of 2013.
Flight testing has shifted from tests for initial certification to function and reliability testing and certification for extended operations far from any airport. First delivery to launch customer All Nippon Airways is scheduled for August or September.

Data from the testing shows the airplane’s performance is maturing similarly to Boeing’s last new aircraft, the 777, Fancher said. “The airplane is flying extremely well.”

Addressing questions about whether the 787 would meet its performance promises to customers, Fancher said: “As of today there are no customer missions that we cannot make.”

Boeing is continuing to take weight out of the plane and both Rolls-Royce and GE are improving their engines, he added. “Over the next couple of years, the combination of these two things will further improve the efficiency of the airplane.”

Boeing also is setting up a satellite site at Everett’s Paine Field to rework already built 787s to the latest configuration.

“It’s going to take us a couple years to work through the backlog of these already built airplanes,” Fancher said.

After many hiccoughs with the 787 and its global supply chain, very few components are arriving with problems these days and there are fewer and less-significant design changes, helping to further boost productivity and quality, Fancher said. “As productivity and quality improve, we can reduce flow time and we can ramp rate up. And throughout this production system, where we’ve got basic and stable operation, we’ve seen productivity and quality numbers that are as good or better than we had been predicting.”

Boeing’s second 787 assembly line, in North Charleston, S.C., is slated to produce three airplanes a month, with first delivery in the middle of 2012, but is big enough to handle five a month and could go to seven with some expansion, according to Ray Conner, vice president and general manager of Supply Chain Management and Operations for Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

Boeing demonstrates LED lighting options in the main cabin of a 747-8 Intercontinental on Thursday, June 2, 2011 in Boeing's wide-body plant in Everett, Wash. (Aubrey Cohen/seattlepi.com) | Click picture for photo gallery.

Boeing has finished “high-risk” testing on its other new airplane, the 747-8, according to Elizabeth Lund, vice president and general manager of the 747 program.

Boeing’s most-recent official word on first 747-8 delivery has been the middle of this year. Lund said the delivery would come this summer, and “it is neck and neck” whether the 747-8 or 787 will deliver first.

The 747-8 also is showing good signs regarding reliability, Lund said. “We expect this aircraft to enter into service at a level comparable with the 777 or better, which was really the best (entries into service) we’ve ever had.”

Boeing has won approval for 747-8 operations at more than 165 destination airports, more than 90 percent of the total that customer airlines prioritized, Lund said. Customer pilots for the first eight months of deliveries have completed initial training, and pilots from Cargolux, Cathay Pacific and Lufthansa have flown the plane, she said.

The flight-management computer “has absolutely been a challenge to develop, and we’re making really good progress,” Lund said. She said the computer would have at least all of the functionality of the 747-400 when the 747-8 enters service, and software upgrades will add to that later.

Boeing is producing 1.5 747-8s a month now and preparing to go to two, with completion of the first airplane at the higher rate set for next May.

Boeing is taking weight out of the plane, while GE improves the engines, and is looking to boost the payload and range, Lund said. “We believe the airplane has some extra capacity in it.”

Boeing has orders for just 114 747-8s from nine customers, but interest is up, Lund said. “It’s a good airplane. The market is taking notice, and we’re upbeat.”

The competing, larger Airbus A380 makes sense only if you can fill it, she said. “We believe for most airlines that we have a superior product.”

And there’s no A380 freighter.

Piasecki and Boeing 737 chief project engineer John Hamilton also provided more details on Boeing’s thinking about the narrow-body market.

Although Boeing executives have said they are leaning toward a new aircraft, rather than giving the 737 new, more-efficient engines, the company continues to look at re-engining.

Engine maker CFM, which is currently the exclusive supplier to the 737, is “very supportive and ready and willing to move forward” with a new LEAP-X engine, she added.

Airbus is offering the LEAP-X and Pratt & Whitney PurePower PW1100G engine on the A320neo. Hamilton and Piasecki said Boeing has looked at engines from CFM, Pratt and Rolls-Royce, didn’t see much difference between the performance of the engines and likes the simplicity and commonality of having a single engine.

One question has been whether new, larger engines will fit under the 737’s wing, given the aircraft’s relatively low ground clearance. Boeing already has a plan to fit an engine with a 70-inch fan (up from 61 inches on the current engine) by raising the nose landing gear, and now is looking into whether it could achieve almost as much improvement with a somewhat smaller fan that wouldn’t require changing the landing gear, Hamilton said.

Boeing also is looking at an entirely new airplane that could provide a cost benefit of at least 20 percent compared with existing 737s and enter service in 2019 or 2020. A top focus for the rest of the year is looking at how the company could quickly start producing many new airplanes while continuing to churn out current 737 models, Piasecki said.

The “baseline” for a new airplane is to use a composite fuselage, such as that of the 787, although the company is considering other options, Piasecki said. She said a twin-aisle configuration is possible, but open-rotor engines are not.

The new plane would focus on the “heart of the market,” which is around 160 seats, she said.

Boeing could have 8 percent better operating cost than the A320neo with a re-engined 737 and double that with a new airplane, Piasecki said.

Why take the extra risk of a new program, compared with re-engining?

“If you have an advantage and you can use it and deliver it to your customers and create value for your shareholders, that’s the direction we want to move,” Piasecki said.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..